Done when I was 15 years old, this drawing is done in ballpoint pen and is an imagining of a girl walking down a path and discovering a strange little man in a tree. I was heavily influenced by John Tenniel's illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice stories. The castle in the background is an actual Irish castle that was moved brick by brick to a location on Longwood Drive in Beverly just outside Chicago.
When I entered it in an art competition, I lost. One of the judges came up to me afterwards and asked if I had copied it from somewhere. I was quite surprised and told him that it was an original work of my own creation. It turned out I lost because the other two judges assumed this was copywork and I must have lifted it from an old illustration!